Exclusive by 36Kr: Newbang Bio, a dietary supplement raw material supplier with an annual revenue of 400 million yuan and serving over 600 brands, secures nearly 200 million yuan in Series C+ financing

Article by Hu Xiangyun

Edited by Hai Ruojing

36Kr has learned that NNB Nutrition, a Nanjing-based dietary ingredient enterprise, has recently completed a financing round of nearly RMB 200 million. This round was led by China Life Private Equity Investment, with participation from existing shareholder Moxi Capital. The raised funds will be mainly used for product R&D and the construction of new manufacturing facilities. This marks the second financing round exceeding RMB 100 million that NNB Nutrition has secured within half a year.

NNB Nutrition focuses on the R&D of dietary supplement ingredients, having launched over 40 original ingredients to date, with more than 100 product pipelines under development covering sports nutrition, weight management, cognitive health, anti-aging and other fields. It serves over 600 end brands including Nestlé, Unilever, and PepsiCo. The company has self-built formulation factories and biosynthesis facilities, and plans to construct a comprehensive manufacturing base covering over 200 mu with an annual production capacity of 10,000 tons. In 2025, NNB Nutrition's annual revenue surpassed RMB 400 million.

Schematic diagram of NNB Nutrition's product matrix

Liao Qilin, founder of NNB Nutrition, has over a decade of deep experience in the dietary supplement industry. According to his observations, the health consumption market has undergone two major transformations in recent years: first, the demand side has shifted from basic nutrition to targeted conditioning; second, convenience has become a critical consumer priority, with users expecting to obtain nutritional benefits and health effects directly through daily food and beverages. This has driven end brands that previously focused on traditional product forms such as tablets, powders, and softgels to vigorously develop functional beverages and specialized functional foods adapted to daily scenarios.

"These new product forms have become mainstream. The innovation in downstream demand and product formats has also changed the selection criteria that end brands apply to ingredient suppliers like us. Today, beyond basic requirements for functionality and compliance, they place greater emphasis on the actual performance of ingredients in these new dosage forms and application scenarios — such as better stability, solubility, taste compatibility, and formulation compatibility," Liao Qilin explained.

Transmitted to the upstream segment, this means ingredient enterprises must simultaneously enhance their R&D efficiency, R&D capabilities, and coverage breadth. In response, NNB Nutrition has upgraded its internal ingredient screening standards, launching the "3P" criteria of Pure, Potent, and Precise, which requires ingredients to combine high purity, strong efficacy, and a "sufficiently precise and sufficiently low" dosage level.

Liao Qilin introduced that unlike most ingredient manufacturers in the industry, NNB Nutrition has always adhered to developing dietary nutritional ingredients following the R&D logic of innovative pharmaceuticals. A key aspect of this approach is that the company designs relevant clinical trial studies "in accordance with standards similar to those for innovative drug development" and provides the resulting data to partners to verify product safety and efficacy. To date, NNB Nutrition has completed dozens of preclinical and clinical trials, and plans to continue launching more than 10 new trials annually in the future.

Underpinning this high-standard clinical R&D is NNB Nutrition's multi-technology integrated R&D matrix, which covers four core technical routes: synthetic biology, chemical synthesis, plant extraction, and formulation technology. "This 'multi-path integration' layout allows us to avoid being confined to a single technical approach. Instead, we orient our operations toward end-market demand, flexibly adjust production processes, and improve R&D efficiency. Currently, multiple products of ours have been successfully developed through this collaborative model."

According to reports, NNB Nutrition once had a representative product: at the initial stage of R&D, the team originally planned to achieve mass production through synthetic biology processes. However, as this category was a completely new innovation in the industry, publicly available technical research reserves were scarce, and the company's supporting process system was not yet mature, making it difficult to directly implement the biosynthesis route.

To seize the market window and establish a first-mover advantage in the track, NNB Nutrition's team first implemented a chemical synthesis process to launch the product commercially. Later, although the team overcame the technical bottlenecks related to synthetic biology, they discovered that using either chemical synthesis or synthetic biology alone had shortcomings, and a hybrid process was the optimal solution — ultimately achieving simultaneous improvements in production efficiency and product stability.

Regarding the influx of synthetic biology-focused enterprises into the nutritional ingredient track in the past two years, Liao Qilin believes their core competitive arenas are not entirely overlapping. NNB Nutrition mainly focuses on "R&D of innovative ingredients that have never been commercialized," while some synthetic biology companies prioritize low-cost fermentation processes to "reproduce existing products through new production methods" — which does not pose a direct impact on the company.

"In fact, we are also building our partner ecosystem. If these synthetic biology enterprises have advantages in a specific technical area or product category, we hope we can collaborate to develop new products, or leverage NNB Nutrition's system to better commercialize their technically superior finished products."

On the commercial front, compared to traditional ingredient trading and sales, "Ingredient Branding" is the differentiated model that NNB Nutrition currently prioritizes. This model typically refers to core suppliers building independent brands directly for consumers, driving end brands to proactively adopt their products through consumer recognition of the core ingredient, forming a two-way empowerment effect. Classic examples including Intel's "Intel Inside" campaign, Dolby in the audio-visual sector, Leica optical lenses, and CATL's power batteries all adopt this model.

Liao Qilin noted that after years of practice, NNB Nutrition's ingredient brands have "continuously grown in market influence." Currently, hundreds of end brands in the industry choose to display and promote NNB Nutrition's ingredient brands on their product labels. "For instance, we once collaborated on a product with a Kardashian-associated brand, which used two of NNB Nutrition's ingredients as core components. The Kardashian herself has mentioned these two ingredients on multiple occasions and across various content platforms."

It is also understood that for cross-border nutritional brands planning to expand overseas, NNB Nutrition not only supplies ingredients but also provides a supporting global OEM system, offering production resources from compliant factories in the United States, Europe, and other regions to complete overseas finished product localization in a one-stop manner. Leveraging its overseas channel resources, the company also assists partner brands in connecting with local offline retail terminals, streamlining the overseas product listing process, and tapping into global consumer markets.

Investor Perspectives:

China Life Private Equity Investment stated: Innovative functional ingredients are the core pillar for dietary supplement enterprises to build industry barriers, achieve quality improvement, and scale expansion. As public awareness of health consumption continues to rise, coupled with the gradual growth of global demand for functional ingredients, the entire industry has entered a new stage of innovation-driven development. NNB Nutrition has long-term deployed in the innovative functional ingredient track, continuously expanding its business in niche segments to deliver health-focused product solutions for the elderly population and broader consumer groups. We hope that through this investment partnership, we can support NNB Nutrition in forging a Chinese innovation path in the global dietary supplement market.

Moxi Capital stated: Dietary supplements combine the dual attributes of the broad health sector and consumer goods. As global consumers' awareness of health management improves, and end product forms evolve from traditional nutritional supplementation to more daily, scenario-specific functional foods and beverages, innovative functional ingredients are becoming the core driving force for industry upgrading. NNB Nutrition has long adhered to developing dietary nutritional ingredients following innovative pharmaceutical R&D logic, continuously building multi-dimensional barriers in product R&D, clinical validation, patent protection, and ingredient branding around diverse technical routes — forming a platform-based innovation capability that balances deep R&D expertise and high commercialization efficiency. As an existing shareholder, Moxi Capital continues to recognize NNB Nutrition's profound insight into end-market demand, its consistent ability to launch high-quality innovative ingredients, and its long-term growth potential in the global market.